The Japanese government is trying to calm fears about radiation levels and food safety in the region around the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility, even as it has raised the severity rating of the crisis to the highest possible

Takashi Sawada, said yesterday that fuel rods in reactors 1 and 3 have melted and settled at the bottom of their containment vessels, confirming fears that the plant suffered a partial meltdown after last month’s huge earthquake and tsunami.

Of course, due to the much greater concentration of people, and the far smaller land territory, should Japan continue to persist with "controlling" the crisis with the same success as it has over the past month, very soon a Level of 8 and/or higher .

Much focus lately has turned to the issue of possible contamination of water, milk, and food in the US, and how our network reporting of radiation levels relates to that. I have addressed this general issue at length in previous updates below, but b

An intrepid Japanese duo has decided to do the reverse Fukushima commute and in a stunning filmed expose, drives through cracked roads, herds of animals in city streets and ghost towns to measure the radiation from 30 km out to 1.5 km away

A magnitude-7.4 aftershock rattled Japan on Thursday night, knocking out power across a large swath of the northern part of the country nearly a month after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that flattened the northeastern coast.

More than 70 schools began regular classes in Fukushima for the first time Wednesday, after government officials carried out radiation testing in the prefecture amid the ongoing nuclear crisis.
A ceremony was held to mark the first day of school...

According to Reuters "the core at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactor has melted through the reactor pressure vessel", Democratic Congressman Edward Markey told a hearing on the nuclear disaster on Wednesday.

The journal Nature is publishing several articles today looking at the long term impact of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan. They're all available to the public. One news report considers what it will take decommission the damaged plant

The Meteorological Agency has been withholding forecasts on dispersal of radioactive substances from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant despite making the forecasts every day, it was learned Monday.

TEPCO said Tuesday that it had found radioactive iodine at 7.5 million times the legal limit in a seawater sample taken near the facility, and government officials imposed a new health limit for radioactivity in fish.

TEPCO finally admitted the truth that radioactive Iodine 131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit. This means Godzilla is most likely very...

You won’t be able to tell if your food or water came from a contaminated region. Thus taking in water and food will become a form of Russian Roulette. I don’t know about you, but that’s not a game I think we should be playing with our health...

Workers began pumping more than 3 million gallons of contaminated water from Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean on Monday, freeing storage space for even more highly radioactive water that has hampered efforts to stabilize t

Reactor 1 is now undergoing sporadic events of recriticality: in other words, the fission reaction is recommencing on its own, and without any supervision, emitting undetectable neutron beams which are irradiating any and all personnel...

Workers on Sunday poured a chemical compound mixed with sawdust and newspaper into a crack at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility that's been a conduit for highly radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean...

Does anyone still read Schumacher's "Small Is Beautiful"? It came out nearly 40 years ago, but it might as well have been written last year for its relevance today. Its central thesis is that we have allowed economics to overtake philosophy...

The NYT has compiled a useful visual summary of the current assessment of the Fukushima radiation, distributed by either air, soil, water and food, compiled through the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency and others.